The present invention relates to an image processing device incorporated in a digital copier, facsimile transceiver or similar digital image forming apparatus for effecting various kinds of digital image processing, e.g., erasing, italicizing and shadowing, and blanking with any desired area of an image.
To effect image processing with a particular area of an image, a prerequisite with the above-described type of image processing device is that the particular area to be processed and the content of processing be recognized. Some different methods have heretofore been proposed for such recognition, as enumerated below:
(1) a method which determines contour data of a mark entered by a marker pen selects a pair of outer and inner contour loops as areas which may be processed while regarding the others inputs as commands, and recognizes the kind of the commands;
(2) a method which causes an operator to enter a desired area and a command by a marker pen and executes image processing with the desired area according to the command;
(3) a method which stores mark information entered in two colors in a memory and extracts area information out of one of the mark information while obtaining processing content information out of the other mark information; and
(4) a method which separates continuous pixels from mark information to thereby determine whether a desired image is a line image having area information or a text image having processing content information.
All the conventional methods, however, are not practicable unless marks are directly entered on documents by a marker pen, smearing documents. Therefore, such methods are not applicable to important documents.
When it is desired to erase image information representative of, for example, a table of a document except for title areas, the areas other than the title areas may be erased by a correcting liquid, instead of being marked by a marker pen. To italicize, blank, shadow or otherwise process title areas, for example, a document with such an image may be prepared independently of a desired document and then cut and adhered to the areas of interest of the desired document. While this kind of procedure does not need a marker pen, it simply retouches the desired document itself and, therefore, cannot be practiced without damaging the document.